Representatives of Oakland’s diverse communities will come together Saturday to celebrate the third annual KoreaTown-Northgate Community Benefit District festival. Organizers say the event gives the local Korean community a chance to engage with its neighbors, many of whom come from a number of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Korean American women are among the least likely to undergo cancer screenings like Pap tests and mammograms. An Oakland-based non-profit health organization is hoping to bring attention to this issue by holding its fourth annual Korean Cancer Walk on Saturday.

The Korea Times in Oakland celebrated the award of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize to Korean-American photojournalist John J. Kim, 36, of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Kim was awarded the prize along with Frank Main and Mark Konko for their reporting on violence in Chicago neighborhoods. The group spent a year with victims, detectives and criminals to penetrate the code of silence that permeates the city's rising murder rate.

On most days the majority of shoppers in Kukje Supermarket in Daly City are not Korean, despite the fact that most of the ingredients are. That shouldn’t be a problem, except that a number of shoppers at Kukje and other Korean markets around the Bay Area are beginning to complain about not being able to read what’s inside the products, or how to prepare them, according to a recent article in the Korea Daily.

Korean director Hyung-rae Shim made his first foray into American cinema with the disastrously un-entertaining D-War. He’s now looking to build on past mistakes with a new comedy called The Last Godfather, about a mafia boss played by Harvey Keitel who tries to train his mentally impaired son to be his successor.

A spate of robberies centered around the El Camino business district in Silicon Valley has Korean business owners on edge, reports the Korea Times. The newspaper reports that a Korean-owned jewelry shop was robbed last week in what appeared to be a repeat of an robbery late last year of another Korean-owned jewelry store. In the earlier robbery, the suspects reportedly got a large sum of cash. No details were given on how much was lost in last week's incident.

Yosemite is one of California’s, and the nation’s, most renowned national parks, but the overwhelming majority of visitors to the park are white, according to the most recent data available. However, change may be afoot, reports the Korea Daily, with growing numbers of visitors from the Korean community boarding tour buses or other modes of transportation to visit Yosemite.

Three local Korean Americans recently received an award from the South Korean president.

The award was presented by the South Korean Consul General to Suk-Jin Pack, Bok-Gi Kim, and Yee-Su Kim of the South Korean government’s Advisor Council on Democratic & Peace Unification of Korea in San Francisco.

Relatives of an elderly Korean woman have filed suit with the senior home where she lived, claiming that abuse by caregivers there led to the woman’s untimely death, reports the Korea Daily in Oakland.

Ignorance and shame are the two biggest factors keeping Korean-American families from applying for state benefits such as food stamps, Medi-Cal and SSI payments, reports Kwang-hee Lee for the Korea Times.

During a victory celebration for Oakland’s new mayor-elect Jean Quan, Korean American pastor Andrew Park applauded the city’s first female and first Asian American mayor for venturing into the “poorest black neighborhoods, listening to people and vowing to combat gang violence.” Park told the Korean language Korea Times that he became a strong Quan supporter long before she decided to make a bid for city hall.

Korean Americans made their strongest showing ever in this year’s mid-term elections, reports the Korean-language Korea Daily, fielding a total of 25 candidates and topping the number of winners from two years ago.

While a proposed $43 billion high-speed rail project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles is coming under increasing flak from local environmentalists and some residents, Koreans living in the Bay Area are voicing strong support for the project, according to Kwang-hee Lee with the Korea Times. The plan is similar to a high-speed train service in Korea linking the capital Seoul with the southern port city of Busan.

More and more Korean-Americans are showing up local free clinics, reports the Korea Times. Statistics show a dramatic 50 percent rise in Korean patients compared to four years earlier, writes Pan-kyung Kim.